Religion: Teacher

At Ahmedabad, India, pupils of the National College noted on their faculty roster a name new to the roster, old in fame—Mahatma† Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The Mahatma, well-informed, later asked students what they would have him teach. Eagerly they sought seclusion, consulted. Would it be political history from this great leader who had well-nigh secured Indian independence in 1920 by his famed policy of “passive resistance?” Or sociology?—Gandhi’s profound knowledge of the “caste” system was none the less because in 1920 he had failed to persuade the masses and the “untouchable castes” to treat each other as “blood brothers,” thereby causing his political defeat through lack of unity. Well he knew the Brahmanic conception of an indelible hereditary stain resting upon definite groups of men. And, of course, they could ask him to tell them of literature. Who better than Gandhi knew Shakespeare, Goethe, Tolstoy? Or the science of government? Gandhi knew well Britain’s jails. Then religion— how the Mahatma’s deep oriental mysticism had swayed India! But which religion should he be asked to expound? Hinduism? Buddhism? Mohammedanism ? Back trooped the brown-skinned pupils and delivered their choice. Forthwith last week Mahatma Gandhi, austere ascetic, Tolstoy disciple, famed Indian politico-spiritual leader, began to teach of Jesus, of the Apostles, of the mysterious Holy Trinity, of twenty centuries of ecclesiastical superstructure. They were glad when the Mahatma spoke of Jesus, but when his thin reedy voice told a harrowing tale of Christianity they were sad.

† An Indian religious appelation roughly equivalent toSaint.